Cocoa Life

With the need to increase production, productivity and to cope up with the new pest and diseases in an introduced crop like cocoa, research on cocoa became crucial. Hence, Mondelēz cocoa life program supported cocoa research in key agricultural universities. This enabled the release of superior varieties for cocoa expansion in the country. A fruit of this successful partnership is the high cocoa productivity achieved in India Vs other cocoa growing countries. The program has successfully transformed the lives of over 100,000 farmers in the 4 southern Indian states while opening doors to newer farming practices like intercropping, thereby providing additional income to the farmers through Inter-cropping cocoa in Coconut, Oil-palm and other crops.

Women play an important but often unrecognized role in cocoa production. Empowering women in cocoa-growing communities increases the positive impact and is a catalyst for change and drives faster community development. Cocoa provides employment and income to thousands of women in rural areas as cocoa is a women friendly crop and most of the work in cocoa farms can be managed by women. Through the India Cocoa Life program, we gave exclusive training to over 2500 women in Health & Hygiene, Livelihood, Empowerment and Farming.

The initiative successfully enrolled more than 3000 marginalized tribal farmers into cocoa program. The tribal farmers were grouped into clusters and were supported with agri equipment to undertake necessary cultivation operations as a group. Cocoa collection centres were opened by Mondelēz very near to their hamlets for easy sale and to facilitate immediate payment for their cocoa produce.